Why are state governments shutting down community seed libraries?

A slow raid is raging across the United States, and its targets are not what you’d expect. They’re often tucked into local libraries, stocked in vintage card catalogs, and wear handwritten labels scrawled with names like green zebra tomato, brown speckled tepary, and purple tomatillo. They are locally-adapted seed varieties shared between backyard gardeners and organic farmers in communities from Boston, Massachusetts, to Oakland, California. According to recent rulings in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Illinois, the seed libraries that facilitate the free exchange of these rare legumes, vegetables, and fruits are “illegal seed distribution centers” under state law. In some communities, the libraries have been uprooted before even getting in the ground.

Humans have been sowing and sharing seeds for more than 10,000 years. Native Americans were perfecting maize crops in the United States long before Europeans arrived, and immigrants later brought kernels of their favorite foods to new soils to keep their home cultures alive.

Seed-lending libraries are one way communities have started to take back the collective food system, from seed to salad. There are currently more than 300 of these exchange centers across the United States. Most partner with local library branches and allow people to borrow and grow all types of produce. Once their harvest is complete, gardeners return seeds from their new crops to be borrowed again the following year.

All appeared to be sprouting smoothly until the Department of Agriculture stepped in. Last year, state regulators in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania shut down the community seed library after finding it in violation of the state seed law. The center is now only permitted to use seeds that are sold commercially, and members are required to destroy seeds at the end of each growing season. Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Illinois have since passed similar measures. State officials argued that seed sharing could threaten the local food supply by distributing poison seeds, weeds or seeds that don’t produce, since the libraries don’t adhere to the same regulations (including labeling and germination testing) as the multi-billion-dollar seed industry.

“The laws regulate the quality of seeds that farmers get because their livelihoods depend on it,” Thapar says. “They were written to regulate commercial seed trade. But the law doesn’t work when something that refers to commercial activity is being applied to non-commercial activity.”

While there hasn’t been any clear indication of who or what is behind the latest crack down, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if the big seed companies were starting to worry about seed libraries undoing some of the work they’ve achieved over the past 50 or 60 years.

“This is antithetical to their business model,” Thapar says, “so it would be in their interests to nip it in the bud.”

But the potential benefits of seed libraries are huge. They increase the availability of local and organic food, create better-adapted local varieties, and fight back against genetic erosion. This is why the Sustainable Economies Law Center provides free legal resources to communities about city and state food laws. The organization also helped launch a seed sharing petition, in partnership with Clif Bar’s Seed Matters initiative, aimed at adding an exemption in the Department of Agriculture’s seed enforcement policy for non-profit seed libraries.

“Seeds have been referred to as a commons that belong to all of us – not just one person or one company that can privatize or profit from them,” Thapar says. “We all have a responsibility to preserve them, and we all have the opportunity to benefit from them as well.”

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4 thoughts on “Why are state governments shutting down community seed libraries?”

Considering what I know about World War II and the siege of Leningrad and the use of some of those seeds that people literally starved and died to protect, I am heart broken and offended by the idea of this. This has nothing to do with commercial food. It is for the benefit of people who would rather grow their own than to purchase food from the store with no idea what is in it. Who want to learn to tend gardens and teach their children and grandchildren. It isn't someone trying to take over a conglomerate, they just want to produce their own harvest and share the wealth of that creation. I think the government, state or federal, is getting way to involved in people's affairs. Especially in this instance. The FDA can't even correctly investigate medicine and allowed something like a mesh implant (something any real farmer could have told you was a really dumb idea to begin with) to go through with an approval. Why would we trust them to regulate community seed banks?

The title came across slightly ambiguously: I interpreted it as the *Federal* government was doing something to shut down seed banks, but it appears that several states are doing it, instead. Either way is unreasonable, and I'd be interested in follow up articles about any pushback or public awareness in the affected states.

I wonder how corporate law can be applied to non-commercial activity? Certainly in the "farmer" and "seed retailer" scenario there has to be a legal framework in place so that the farmer can seek compensation for faulty seed products. However, in the seed library case, if there is no money being exchanged then there is no establishment of a contract, or even an implied contractual arrangement. Also, both the seed borrower and seed lender understand that there are no guarantees on germination, and the risk of faulty seeds is spread between the two parties since the packet of seeds could not be "returned" to the library if there is no harvest.